“I’ve really gone to town and found some incredible original pieces that I’m very excited about. Knowing that it’s the final season, I wanted to go out on a high and epitomize that mid-decade point that we’ve reached. The ’20s glamour and decadence, knowing that that way of life is waning.” Anna Mary Scott Robbins, costume designer Downton Abbey

I am in love with costume design and telling stories through clothes. Downton Abbey’s final season has just launched in the U.S., with the 1920s in full swing. The look of the show is extremely important, down to the smallest detail and the clothing is at the heart of the storytelling. In a recent Glamour Magazine interview with costume designer, Anna Mary Scott Robbins, Robbins describes the process of finding vintage pieces and the combination of making things from scratch and adopting originals for the characters, whom she knows so well: “You could troll vintage markets for months and months and months and it might not be exactly like it was in your imagination. That’s another reason you make something: It gives you control over the exact coloring of the silk, the cut, the detailing. I tend to have an open mind when vintage shopping and am constantly looking for things that could be for any of our characters. When I find them, I’ll buy them and stockpile them. I know the characters so well that I can buy things knowing they’ll be good for certain scene moments. Having a rough idea where the characters’ stories are taking them, I try to be prepared.”

Robbins, who joined the show last year for Season 5 has really hit her stride, just in time to see the characters embrace the movement of the 1920s. We all benefit from the perfect character studies and storytelling through fabric.